Page 260 - erewhon

and go wheresoever he will whensoever he pleases, is more
highly organised than he who, should he wish for the same
power, might wish for the wings of a bird with an equal
chance of getting them; and whose legs are his only means
of locomotion? That old philosophic enemy, matter, the in-
herently and essentially evil, still hangs about the neck of
the poor and strangles him: but to the rich, matter is im-
material; the elaborate organisation of his extra-corporeal
system has freed his soul.
‘This is the secret of the homage which we see rich men
receive from those who are poorer than themselves: it would
be a grave error to suppose that this deference proceeds
from motives which we need be ashamed of: it is the natural
respect which all living creatures pay to those whom they
recognise as higher than themselves in the scale of animal
life, and is analogous to the veneration which a dog feels
for man. Among savage races it is deemed highly honour-
able to be the possessor of a gun, and throughout all known
time there has been a feeling that those who are worth most
are the worthiest.’
And so he went on at considerable length, attempting to
show what changes in the distribution of animal and veg-
etable life throughout the kingdom had been caused by this
and that of man’s inventions, and in what way each was con-
nected with the moral and intellectual development of the
human species: he even allotted to some the share which
they had had in the creation and modification of man’s body,
and that which they would hereafter have in its destruction;
but the other writer was considered to have the best of it,